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Last weekend I pulled off a surprise overnight for the husband to celebrate our anniversary. Thirteen years. Which feels like forever and yet not nearly enough to encapsulate all the things they've contained. Today's our actual anniversary, picked because I really wanted to be married on a great feast day but nobody has weddings on a Thursday and ain't nobody was going to wait a whole year for the right date. (I just looked back at a calendar and we totally could've and maybe should've done All Saints and had my preferred fall season rather than the 90 degree church buuuut that would've involved another few very long engaged months and no soon-to-be-married person wants to wait another few months, right?) Anyway. We did the best we could and decided that getting married the day after the Assumption was pretty great, too. Then we could do the whole Marian consecration of our family and finish the night before. So that's what we did.

Not sure why anyone needed to know that other than to say that today is our anniversary but the timing worked that it made more sense with babysitters to go last weekend. I got an email a few months ago from a chain of fancy hotels advertising a great deal on a Sunday night stay and I got all romantic and motivated and decided to try to pull it off. Thanks to my sister and brother-in-law who were willing to take all four older ones over night, it worked and we had a sweet little foreign overnight. (And the surprise worked! He was totally unsuspecting and absolutely loved it :)

I didn't capture many pics because 1. Ben and 2. Lazy.

But here's a few because God granted us a gorgeous day and I had to share the beauty:

Prepare yourself for the cuteness of Ben's first time in the pool...

His face!!

We didn't actually get the chance to go swimming together but lounging around the pool and taking turns wasn't all that bad ;)

Crossword by the pool. Because I'm cool like that.

Our little romantically adorable companion.

An attempt at a fancy dinner and a blurry couple selfie

I had no idea how crazy intense hard beautiful painful amazing Marriage would be thirteen years ago. I thought I knew but just like a whole lot of things in life, you don't really know what it's all about until you're in the middle of it. God knows what He's doing, though, and brought these two faulty fumbling sinners together for a reason. I'm so glad He did. I hope and pray our Marriage can be a reflection of His amazing redemption and love to the world.

10 comments

Aww, looks like a wonderful anniversary! We were married the day after a Marian feast day as well. I really wanted to be married on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, but the year we got married it was on a Friday and too many immediate family members couldn't be there on a Friday, so we moved it to the day after on the Feast of St. Lucia/Lucy.

Ha! I wish I felt the same way! I'm still way over what I consider my "normal" weight…though I may have to reevaluate what my normal is now that I'm older :) The last two have been so hard to bounce back from physically! But thank you, that is very sweet to say!

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